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Wells Fargo
On September 4, 2005, Wells Fargo announced the creation of Stagecoach Island, a private island sim built exclusively for Wells Fargo, and not accessible to the rest of Second Life Stagecoach Island With the help of Swivel Media, an experiential marketing agency, the goal of Stagecoach Island was to teach young adults how to handle their financeshttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1194009,00.html . Visitors would be able to partake in many of the same things that are available within Second Life: skydiving, flying hovercrafts, dancing, shopping, etc. Players received $30 in imaginary money with which to buy clothes, pay for rides, and the like. The program rewarded saving money, earning 10% interest per day on "deposits." They also completed quizzes that rewarded players with $5 of new funds. Stagecoach Island was not immediately accessible to the rest of Second Life, in the same manner that Teen SL is separate from the rest of Second Life. This is not the first instance in a virtual world genre where a company licenses its technology to another company to create a completely separate "pocket unverse" within the original game's network; Active Worlds did it years earlier. FIC Linden Lab commissioned Bedazzle Studios to create most of the content for Stagecoach Island. No public bid for the project was offered. The usage of Bedazzle was a decision that was met with much criticism from some residents who claimed that Bedazzle was receiving special consideration over other residents. According to David Fleck, Linden Lab's vice president of marketing, some of the design and programming work for Stagecoach Island was subcontracted out to Second Life residents: "The core development was done by developers in 'Second Life' that run successful businesses and have great design skills based on our tool set." Move to ActiveWorlds Stagecoach Island moved from Second Life to Active Worlds (AW) in January of 2006, without the knowledge of Bedazzle Studios. Wells Fargo recreated several of the buildings, vehicles, and even textures that were made by Second Life residents (some, without the creator's knowledge or agreement). Wells Fargo (or whomever built the AW area for them) even "screen capture"ed some textures from the SL buildings and then put them on the buildings in AW (this is noticeable by the presence of an avatar name-bubble in one of the windows for a building). These actions were seen by some residents of SL as "stealing" content and legal action was discussed since residents own the IP (intellectual property) of their creations. It is not known if Active Worlds has any knowledge of the recreations and/or texture "ripping". Links * Wells Fargo Homepage * Stagecoach Island * Swivel Media Homepage * Wells Fargo launches game inside 'Second Life', CNET news.com * Wells Fargo Buys 'Second Life' Island, Clickable Culture * Wells Fargo Harnesses FIC Labor for Stagecoach Island, Second Life Herald *SL Forums: "Stagecoach Island Defects to AW" - Pictures of the screen captured textures on the buildings as well as general discussion on SL content being used in AW is discussed. *SL Forums: "News.com article on Wells Fargo" - Talk of Bedazzle recieving special consideration is mentioned. Category:Misc History Articles